Big Idea: Blackbaud provides customized organizational and fundraising solutions for non-profits, not only focusing on resources needed but also the overall goal of each company.

Why It's Working: From the biggest non-profits to small, one-person operations, Blackbaud has low-cost solutions for non-profits with a variety of missions. And, it just increased its power with the acquisition of web service Convio.

Whether you're a 12-year-old boy who wants to raise money to save your grandma's house from foreclosure or an established non-profit looking to reach a massive audience, Blackbaud wants to provide a solution to help your organization rake in funds.

"We have a whole bunch of solutions," explains Jana Eggers, senior vice president of products and marketing at Blackbaud. "It's used for so many different things — from fundraising to social media work."

An old company in the technology world, Blackbaud was founded in 1981 by Tony Bakker in Long Island. A local independent school received a grant for a computer programmer and the company blossomed from there. In 1989, Blackbaud's headquarters relocated to Charleston, S.C., where it remains today. With offices in eight countries, plus locations in U.S. cities including Austin, San Diego, Boston, Lincoln, Neb., and two offices in Washington, D.C., Blackbaud's wealth of products to help non-profits of all sizes has paid off.

The company has 27,000 customers who utilize the various services. Clients of Blackbaud can basically design their own solution by choosing from a bevy of non-profit management systems. And since there are so many products to choose from, Eggers says there is no one-size-fits-all solution for every non-profit. Large direct mail and response campaigns, such as those put out by the March of Dimes or a PBS station, might find Blackbaud's segmentation and analytics work helpful. For example, donor information is augmented with "wealth information" to pinpoint the group of potential donors an organization should target in their advertisements. Such products can help non-profits on a mission to raise funding via mail campaign or target a particular demographic based on various data. Blackbaud's Target Analytics run for the Salvation Army's Carolina division, found $4.2 million in undiscovered funding.

But Blackbaud's clients also include one-person operations, such as Noah Lamaide, a 12-year-old who saved his grandmother's house from foreclosure by starting a donation site based on Blackbaud's services. Setting up a donation page is free, but BlackbaudNow charges a transaction fee of 4.95% and $0.30 per transaction for all online donations processed through the site.

The company's products can be accessed through several websites:

eTapestry is "for the truly established but smaller non-profit," Eggers says. "Maybe a one-or-two person fundraising staff." This service would be best used for a local soccer league, for example.

BBNow is more for the individual non-profit, like Noah Lamaide's mission or "Send Mo Home," a campaign organized by a solider in Afghanistan to bring home a dog he found while on tour.

Blackbaud also serves vertical markets, like tickets and museum management.

The pricing structure of the products varies from the minimal transaction fee to a hundred dollars per month to thousands to use all the products. It all depends on the services the client purchases.

"In the for-profit world, we would be considered on the low end of the [pricing] business model," Eggers adds.

Earlier this month, Blackbaud acquired Convio, which provides software for non-profits that allow organizations to harness the power of the web, their constituents' opinions and interests to reach a mass audience. Convio was founded in 1999 by Vinay Bhagat after he volunteered for a telethon fundraiser and thought there had to be a better way for non-profits to connect with their constituents.

On May 4, Blackbaud absorbed the company, along with its technology.

"Convio competed with us in a certain space, part with our online and team fundraising side," she said. "They were a SaaS-based solution and we already had on-premise software, but they were obviously stronger than us in that because they started there. We looked at that as a terrific compliment to us."

What do you think about Blackbaud's services, now augmented with the Convio? Tell us in the comments.

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